June 26, 2014 AT 3:52 pm

This CEO’s out for blood

Elizabeth Holmes founded her revolutionary blood diagnostics company, Theranos, when she was 19. It’s now worth more than $9 billion, and poised to change health care.

Theranos’s tests can be performed on just a few drops of blood, or about 1/100th to 1/1,000th of the amount that would ordinarily be required–an extraordinary potential boon to frequently tested hospital patients or cancer victims, the elderly, infants, children, the obese, those on anticoagulants, or simply anyone with an aversion to blood draws. Theranos phlebotomists–technicians licensed to take blood–draw it with a finger stick using a patented method that minimizes even the minor discomfort involved with that procedure.